Five down, one more to go. In the fifth installment of the series on lessons the Eclipse team learnt from the Callisto project, Bjorn Freeman Benson explains the problem of setting up a common interface.

"The Callisto Simultaneous Release started with the goal of simultaneous releasing ten separate Eclipse projects. Just that. Nothing more. A same day, same hour release of ten separate projects. The project teams also had the sub-goal of solving the worst UI problems: those 'three menu items with the same name' and 'loading project X causes project Y to stop working'-type issues that cause severe embarrassment," Bjorn says.

Although the Callisto project is a simultaneous release, the Eclipse community had understood it to be an integrated product. Bjorn says that it is a valid desire, but a much harder problem. "We'll probably attempt that in one of our future yearly moon-of-Jupiter simultaneous releases. Until then, those of us on the technical side have been carefully trying to reset expectations to reality: a simultaneous release of ten projects," he says.

The lesson Bjorn says he learnt is to be careful in what one says, because people will repeat what they want to hear, not what was said. "Our corollary lesson is to continuously correct and level set expectations - Callisto is about a simultaneous, same-day, same-hour, release of ten major Eclipse projects. Period."